It was a tad on the warm side last year in the United Kingdom. There was, for instance, a new turbo-charged 60-second high temperature record declared on July 19th, halfway down the runway at the jet fighter base of RAF Coningsby. Climate journalists were in full Thermogeddon reporting mode. It is almost a shame to bring facts and statistics to the party, although the poopers might note that there has been no change in average U.K. temperatures for more than two decades, following the short rise during the 1980s and 90s. Furthermore, the 10°C average temperature last year was only a rounding error higher than 2014. No change in the decades-long average temperature is indicated by the fact that the current 10-year running average in the U.K. is still no higher than it was between 1998 and 2007 at 9.4°C.
he above graph was compiled by the climate journalist Paul Homewood for his annual U.K. weather report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). He further notes that annual temperatures last year were well within the bounds of natural variability, being 0.82°C above the 30-year average. By comparison, 2010 was 0.92°C below, whilst several other years have had bigger anomalies than 2022.
As we have seen in past Daily Sceptic articles. the key misunderstanding in much climate discourse is between weather events, often described as ‘extreme’, and climate trends. Overall global warming has been running out of steam for two decades. Homewood could have noted that the 2010s in the U.K. were actually cooler than the 2000s. But headlines and click-bait science papers designed to promote the collectivist Net Zero project dumb down on weather stories, even attempting to attribute individual events to long-term climatic changes. Perhaps this is not surprising, since many take their lead from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that holds the implausible view that all changes in the climate since 1900 have been caused by humans. This of course is the same IPCC that was set up in 1988 to look into the “scientific basis” of the risk of human-induced climate change.
In a separate note for the GWPF, the former BBC science editor Dr. David Whitehouse recently noted that most environmental journalists habitually report verbatim the ‘weather is climate‘ scam. “If financial organisations or Treasury officials played around with predictions like this they would almost certainly come in for a dose of criticism and further probing from proper journalists,” he observed. Giving a recent example, he noted an unquestioning attitude towards the World Meteorological Organisation that observed natural variability in any coming El Niño warming, but also said the rise would show “global warming is accelerating”.
Read More: Climate Crisis Shock: No Change in Average U.K. Temperatures for More Than Two Decades
